The Family Business

I arrived home yesterday from our company’s annual fall retreat. Every year, the two offices (Providence and Carrboro) meet near Asheville, NC at a beautiful mountain retreat center to relax, eat, drink and get to know each other a little better. Oh, and we talk a little business, too.

Mark (the owner) could just as easily set up a web meeting or use a company-wide email to disseminate all the vital data: profitability, changes in benefits, organization charts, etc. But the real purpose of the retreat is to get together as a family and toast the success of the previous year and dream about the coming one.

Even though the company has grown in numbers over time, it’s never lost the culture of family (a third of the employees have been with Newfangled 10 years or more). Many of us are involved in each others lives and spend time with each other during off hours. I think this is vital to move our mission beyond just numbers and into making a difference in the lives of our clients, as well as our own. Newfangled’s unwritten (but well understood) mission is to make a significant and measurable impact on our client’s bottom line. We really do care about the people for whom we build Lead Development Ecosystems* and we want our clients’ organizations to be wildly successful. The proof is in clients that have remained with us for five or ten years.

We work to live (not the other way around), and we’ve found the best way to continue to make our clients successful is to nurture the family culture of Newfangled. And I hope that never changes.

*If you’re unfamiliar with the term “Lead Development Ecosystem” read our latest newsletter, “We Don’t Build Websites Anymore.”